V

THE 'DE CIVITATE DEI' IN THE MIDDLE AGES

SO far we have been trying to find out what S. Augustine meant to himself. In
these two closing lectures I want to consider what later ages have made of him.
This is not easy. Students, and students alone, have sufficient data for a
judgment concerning the practical influence of a book. Yet that often makes them
bad judges. Living among books they are apt to over-estimate their significance.
They may attribute to a book results which are due to many other causes. If we
mean by the influence of the 'De Civitate Dei' that it caused people to think or
to do things which, except for it they would not have thought or done, the
problem of estimating that influence is hard to solve. As a rule no single cause
is adequate, but many causes combine to produce a practical result of any
historical importance. Commonly a book, however influential, is never more than
a secondary cause. Rousseau did not produce the French Revolution, however
highly you rate his influence. That was the consequence of forces that had been
active for a long time. Rousseau may have lit the match--set fire to the powder
magazine. He did not make the powder.

So with the 'De Civitate Dei.' Vast is its influence; still we must beware of
the negative proposition, that if it had not been written, the course of
mediæval history would have been materially different. It might have been. But
it would be hard to prove this.

There is another way in which the problem is difficult--a way in which the
problem about the influence of Voltaire or Rousseau is not difficult. Literally
immeasurable has been the influence of S. Augustine in moulding the mind of
Western Europe. So deeply has it entered into our life, that it is not possible
to say where his influence begins and where it ends. For the mediæval world he
summed up so much of their heritage from the ancient world--he was so large a
conduit-pipe--that it is hard to say where the stream did not penetrate. His
characteristic theological doctrine is so universal and of such immense import
in the West, that it is easy to over-estimate it in comparison with others.

The problem of Augustine's political or semi-political influence is a little
easier. It is more sharply defined. Yet even here it is hard to disentangle the
threads: or to be sure that what we see at work is the mind of S. Augustine, and
not other causes. Add to this the additional difficulty which is created by the
mediæval habit of citing names and stock quotations merely to fortify itself,
perhaps too with little acquaintance with a writer's mind.

Perhaps it is safer to say that we are examining the prevalence of certain
ideals, of which S. Augustine was, or was believed to be, the exponent; and that
therefore presumably had to do with their prevalence. Even Troeltsch, who is all
for treating S. Augustine as above everything an ancient, admits his importance
for the future--as being the founder of the first great Kultur-Ethik of
Christendom. To-day I shall try and estimate his influence in the Middle Ages,
and in the last lecture I shall deal with later times. All that can be attempted
is to take certain characteristic illustrations from the earlier, the middle and
the later period.

Einhard was the biographer and son-in-law of Charlemagne. I see no objection
to calling him that--we need not be haunted by Freeman's ghost. In his personal
description he tells us that Charlemagne was fond of reading, and more
especially was devoted to the books of S. Augustine's 'De Civitate Dei.' We
cannot treat this statement as being without significance. Doubtless Charles
felt that the portrait of a Christian prince drawn in the Fifth Book and known
as 'The Mirror of Princes,' was the portrait of the kind of prince he would like
to be ('De Civitate,' V. 24):

'The State and Truth of a Christian Emperor's Felicity.-- For we
Christians do not say that Christian Emperors are happy because they have a long
reign, or die leaving their sons in quiet possession of their empires, or have
been ever victorious, or powerful against all their opposers. These are but
gifts and solaces of this laborious, joyless life; idolaters and such as belong
not to God (as these Emperors do) may enjoy them; because God in His mercy will
not have these that know Him to believe that such things are the best goods He
gives. But happy they are (say we) if they reign justly, free from being puffed
up with the glossing exaltations of their attendance or the cringes of their
subjects; if they know themselves to be but men, and remember that; if they make
their power their trumpeter, to divulge the true adoration of God's majesty; if
they love, fear and honour Him; if they long most for that empire where they
need not fear to have partners; if they be slack to avenge, quick to forgive; if
they use correction for the public good, and not for private hate; if their
pardons promise not liberty of offending, but indeed only hope of reformation;
if they counterpoise their enforced acts of severity with the like weight of
bounty and clemency; if their lusts be the lesser, because they have the larger
licence; if they desire to rule their own effects, rather than others' estates;
and if they do all things, not for glory, but for charity, and with all, and
before all, give God the due sacrifice of prayer for their imperfections; such
Christian emperors we call happy, here in hope, and hereafter when the time we
look for comes, indeed.'

We may go further. Charles would not think of himself as head of a Civitas
terrena. He need not. He aimed at a realm in which Christ was King, in which
the true God was worshipped, and none other; a common-wealth inspired by justice
in the strict sense, including all the theological implications of S. Augustine.
That is to say, the realm of 'imperial Charlemagne' was a Christian Empire, the
City of God on earth. Certainly Charles did not draw from this any doctrine of
the political power of the Pope--rather he deduced the rights of imperial
oversight. We may be sure that he would not classify his realm under the second
definition of the commonwealth, from which justice and religion are excluded.
How could he? He had baptised the Saxons at the point of the sword, and had
summoned the Council of Frankfort. Proud as he may have been at being the
successor of Augustus, he would regard himself yet more proudly as the successor
of Constantine and Theodosius. Now Augustine (however you interpret him) never
identified the Civitas Dei with any earthly State. But he had prepared
the way for other people to do this.

The Holy Roman Empire, as it developed, declared by its first title its claim
to be the Civitas Dei on earth-- i.e. a true Catholic
Commonwealth with two swords in all governing departments, the secular and the
spiritual. Augustine could say Omnium Christianorum una respublica est (XXV.
1).

Charlemagne, and still more the great Otto, would feel that they were
undertaking to realise that maxim in actual life. That is the meaning of the
imperial claim to be 'Lord of the World.' Lord Bryce declares that 'it is hardly
too much to say that the Holy Roman Empire was built upon the foundation of the
"De Civitate Dei."' This statement goes too far, if by it we
understand anything that S. Augustine intended. Further, it underrates the
other-worldly character of S. Augustine's own conception of the Civitas Dei. But
it is no whit short of the truth, if we adopt that interpretation of the 'De
Civitate Dei,' and of the chapters upon justice as essential to a true republic,
which I discussed in Lecture III. Remember too, that this--the notion of the
'great State' of the Middle Ages as the Civitas Dei--has nothing to do
with the question whether Augustine taught a doctrine of hierarchical domination
or no. It is equally compatible with Caesaro-papism. The conception of the Holy
Roman Empire as of the one Commonwealth of God could claim to realise the
Augustinian ideal merely by its doctrine of the ecclesiastical position of the
Emperor, who is a sacred person, Canon of S. Peter's, advocate and protector of
the Church. What is capital for our purpose is the point which Lord Bryce
emphasises, the religious character of the Holy Roman Empire. It is not the
religious character of one section (the Church so-called) set over against the
other. It is the whole people, as it is the whole of life, which is gathered
into one great unity. To quote in substance from one authority, Engelbert of
Admont,[1] who will come again into question
later on:

'"There is one and one only Commonwealth of the whole Christian people.
Therefore there must necessarily be one and one only king and prince of that
Commonwealth, ordained and constituted for the expansion and defence of that
Faith and people." On which grounds Augustine concludes that outside the
Church there never was nor ever could be a true Empire, although there have been
Emperors, qualitercunque et secundum quid, non simpliciter, who were
outside the Catholic Faith and Church.'

The grandiose conception of organised human life, which was expressed in the
Holy Roman Empire, was the origin of the attempts of theorists to secure a
harmony. The Church and the State might serve as names for the two great
departments, ecclesiastical and civil. In that way the word Church came to
acquire one of its meanings--one which has never quite gone from it--as the
equivalent of the clergy. But it is the Christian world as a whole, 'the whole
body of Christian people throughout the world,' that is the entire Church, and
makes up the entire Commonwealth. So much so that towards the close of the
Middle Ages one great and revolutionary scholastic, William of Ockham, could go
further even than S. Augustine's phrase about all Christians making one
commonwealth, and boldly declare that all men are one society. 'Omnes homines
sunt unum corpus et unum collegium.' As one writer put it, the regnum, the
sacerdotium, the studium--the State, the Church, the University--were
the rulers of the Commonwealth. This point is one which it is important to make
clear before we proceed to the various controversies between the two sets of
officers, civil and spiritual. Whether you take the Imperialist or the Papalist
view, as to which of these is to have the last word, whether you are Erastian or
clericalist, you are equally within the limits and the circle of ideas of the
'De Civitate Dei,' as it was interpreted to mean a great Church-State. Modern
Erastianism is a bastard growth. It has nothing to do with the pure milk of the
word dispersed by Thomas Lüber, who said that he was considering only a State
in which one religion and one only was tolerated, and that the true one. But I
must not linger over this. In earlier papers on 'Erastus' on the 'Respublica
Christiana' I have tried to work it out in detail.[2]

Let us pass to some later illustrations. The concordant government of the
world by Pope and Emperor was an ideal. In practice there was a struggle for
preponderance. The Papacy had sunk to its lowest in the tenth century. From that
degradation the Saxon Emperors rescued it. The friendship between Otto the Third
and Pope Sylvester II (Gerbert) did for moment realise the ideal. They write
ecstatically to one another: 'Nostrum, nostrum est imperium Romanum.' Once more
the Papacy drooped. The Franconian kings began to lift it from the dust. After
the Synod of Sutri in 1046 and the deposition of Pope Gregory VI at the bidding
of Henry III, the Cluniac revival spread through Western Europe, and its
greatest representative assumed the tiara as Gregory VII. The conflict that had
long been preparing now broke forth. After a brief space of amity with the weak
and vicious Henry IV, Gregory launched the excommunication, and the long war
began. Nowadays we are bidden not to call it the Investiture Controversy, though
that is no bad name for the first phase, which ended with the Concordat of Worms
in 1122. Here more than anywhere can we trace the influence of S. Augustine. Dr.
Mirbt has examined all the literature.[3] In
an interesting tractate he has shown how on every kind of topic S. Augustine's
authority was invoked. In the 'Libelli de Lite,' which make up three volumes of
the 'Monu-menta Germaniae Historica,' we have an ample pamphlet literature.
Augustine is used as an authority by both sides. It should be said that it is
doubtful how far many of the disputants had read the 'De Civitate Dei.' Mirbt
has made it clear that in this as in other matters they used collections of
passages. One such collection is known. Probably there were others.[4]

The use of Augustine by both sides is evidence to justify what I said
earlier, that the question of the influence of the ideal of the 'De Civitate Dei
' is irrelevant to the topic of its clericalist or regalist interpretation.
Obviously Augustine can be made use of by clericalists. But when we remember
that the Empire is regarded as the Commonwealth of which Christ is King, and
that it is by no means certain whether Augustine could set Pope above King in
any political sense, we need not be surprised that some of Hildebrand's
adversaries made as much play with Augustine's name as did his supporters. One
treatise among many, the 'De Unitate Ecclesiae,'[5]
written after the death of Gregory VII, we may take as an illustration. It is
strongly imperialist. A passionate appeal for unity alike in Church and Empire,
it is an argument in favour of the anti-pope. With arguments drawn from the
maxim remota justitia quid regna nisi magna latrocinia, the Hildebrandine
party is condemned for the deposition of Henry IV. (The writer appears to
separate ecclesia from regnum. That may be because he takes ecclesia
in the narrow sense as equivalent to the clergy.) Many and long are the
citations from the 'De Civitate Dei.' The writer quotes the 'Mirror of Princes'
at length, and shows that he has no doubt about the relevancy of the book to the
controversy.

In Hildebrand himself we find but little use of S. Augustine. One of his
earlier letters shows that he was imbued with a conception of the relations of
Pope and Emperor, which could preserve the unity of the ancient ideal. The most
famous letter of all points the other way. Hildebrand revives what had fallen
into disuse--the non-Christian way of treating the secular State. The famous
letter[6] (it is really a tract) to Hermann
of Metz is akin to Augustine's account of the lust of power, as being one of the
chief contributary causes to the growth of the terrene state. Hackneyed
as is the quotation, it is needful here:

'Who,' he asks, 'is ignorant that kings and princes had their origin in those
who, ignorant of God and covering themselves with pride, violence and perfidy,
in fact nearly every crime, under the inspiration of the devil, the prince of
this world, claimed to rule over their peers, i.e. men, in blind lust and
intolerable arrogance.'

It is hard to suppose that Gregory was ignorant of the 'De Civitate Dei,'
though the only passage from Augustine's writings which he quotes in this letter
is from the 'De Doctrina Christiana.'

Another passage is even more noteworthy:

'It would really be more fitting to speak of good Christians as Kings, than
to call bad princes so. The former in seeking the glory of God rule themselves.
The latter seeking their own lusts are enemies to themselves and tyrants to
others. The former are the body of that true King, Christ; the latter are the
body of their father the devil.'

This suggests Tyconius.

Hildebrand, thinking of rulers in an ascending feudal hierarchy, could not
make any special exception for royalty, and was justified by the facts of the
eleventh century. Much that he said was due to his thinking of phenomena which
were before his eyes. Yet in these two passages there is a very distinctive
mark, as of the two cities. Also it is one of the rare mediæval passages which
speak of civil government as equivalent to nothing better than the civitas
terrena; though even here it is not civil government itself, but the actual
personal wickedness of kings and princes that is condemned. Moreover, even the
letter which was called out by the stress of the collision with Henry IV did not
represent Gregory's whole mind. In an earlier letter he had spoken in the usual
way of two coordinate and fraternal powers. In his letters to William I and
other kings he seemed ready enough to adopt a high view of secular authority,
provided that it is always duly subordinate to the spiritual.[7]

On the whole the controversial literature of the day witnesses to the
enormous dependence on S. Augustine; and this dependence is greater in some of
the other writers than it is in Hildebrand himself.

Let us pass from this to a different atmosphere, less clouded with
controversy. The 'Concordia Discordantium Canorum' or 'Decretum' of Gratian
(1139), although it is printed foremost in the 'Corpus Juris Canonici,' is not
an authoritative work. Unlike the 'Decretale' of Gregory IX a century later, or
the 'Sext' of Boniface VIII, it is not definitely promulgated law--though it
must be remembered that even these decretals are in the Bulls which promulgated
them, merely addressed to the University of Bologna, and not promulgated to the
judges in the Courts Christian. Gratian's work is like the 'Institutes' of Coke--immense
in influence but not official. It gives no legal authority to any text in it.
Yet its importance is little less than if it were official. Anyhow it is
evidence of the way in which the legal mind of that day looked at these matters.
In this book we are in a different atmosphere. If you take the conflict between
Popes and Emperors as a whole, what establishes itself is the influence of S.
Augustine upon both sides, owing to the universal belief in the Empire as a
Christian commonwealth, the embodiment of true justice, i.e. to the
general repudiation of the second or minimising definition (Augustine's own) of
a respublica. 'The mediæval Church was a State' is a common saying. Yet
more true is it to say that the mediæval State was a Church--at least in
ideal; for the ideal was the Holy Empire with its twin heads, the smaller
semi-national states being altogether on a lower level, like duchies.

The 'Decretum' of Gratian is concerned not so much with the ideal of a
Catholic Commonwealth, as with the supremacy of the ecclesiastical element over
the civil. Gratian's work is more than what it seems-- a compilation, more even
than a law book. It is designed to make law by declaring it; it is a
politico-ecclesiastical pamphlet, and mirrors the life and thought of the day.
Its fundamental thesis, the subordination of civil to ecclesiastical authority,
is stated at the outset. In Distinction X Gratian lays down in his own words
that the constitutions of princes do not prevail over ecclesiastical
constitutions; that the tribunals of kings are subject to the sacerdotal power.
This statement might conceivably be explained to refer only to matters of
spiritual import, and in emergency could be so explained. But Gratian meant more
than that. His object was to make a law book for the Church that should be
parallel with the 'Corpus Juris Civilis.' His work was executed at Bologna, the
home of the great Romanist revival: it emanated from the chair which Professor
Galante holds to-day. If the Pope were truly sovereign, the halting references
to spiritual authority in the civil law--even those conditioned by the maxim
that the Emperor was the source of all law--might have something set over
against them. Justinian might begin his code with the title 'De Summa Trinitate
et Fide Catholica.' That would have been enough, and more than enough, to
satisfy S. Augustine. But Justinian himself had asserted an imperial supremacy
in theological controversies which the Church in the West would not admit.

Here, however, we are concerned with nothing but S. Augustine's political
influence. Of the citations which make up the 'Decretum,' 530 come from his
writings. Only about a dozen are out of the 'De Civitate Dei.' Many of them are
of no importance. Some are of incalculable import. Comparatively little use may
be made of the 'De Civitate Dei'; but this lack is more than made up by the
quotations from the treatises against the Donatists. In vulgar journalese, the
author has 'gutted ' the anti-Donatist treatises of S. Augustine (c. xxiii. q.
iv. 37-44). The section dealing with persecution is largely made up from them.
Skilful but not unfair use is made of S. Augustine's concessions. We have, it is
true, no right to say that Augustine would have approved the capital punishment
of heretics or of the mediæval inquisition (which was later than Gratian). But,
as we saw, Augustine admitted the use of compulsion, and argued that the only
reason why it was not employed by the early Christians was their numerical
weakness. Another passage often thought to be an anticipation of the original
contract occurs in the 'Confessions,' and is given by Augustine from Cicero, Generale
pactum humanae societatis obedire regibus. It is S. Augustine again (in his
sermon on the Centurion's son) who is cited in justification of lawful war (c.
xxiii. i. 2) together with three other passages. The 'Decretum' of Gratian is
one of the most important elements in the construction of mediæval society. The
use it makes of Augustine's maxims in all political and semi-political matters
is decisive as to his influence.

After this it may seem needless to allude to a merely literary effort. The 'Chronicon'
of Otto of Freisingen, the historian of Frederic Barbarossa, was mentioned in
its place in discussing S. Augustine's philosophy of history. It is an
interesting illustration of the twelfth century. Otto sets himself deliberately
to relate the history of the world on the line of the 'De Civitate Dei' with the
help of Augustine and Orosius. The most interesting pieces are the prologues. In
that prefixed to Book III there is a balanced and reflective estimate of the 'Praeparatio
Evangelica,' as afforded by the universal empire of Rome. The prologue to Book
IV contains a moderate statement of the imperialist position. There are two
powers in the Church. Otto never puts out the idea of two distinct societies of
Church and State, as was done in later times. It is with him (as always in the
Middle Ages) a question of the balance of two powers in the same society. Christ
desired the two swords to be in the hands of two different representatives: He
uses the 'render to Cæsar' to support the rights of the crown, and quotes the
pertinent passage of S. Augustine addressed to the Donatists in which he laid
down that property can be rightly possessed only by human law at the bidding of
kings, who are of divine appointment. Kings he holds to reign by the ordination
of God and the election of the people, and Constantine with the approval of the
Church ecclesiae juste regalia contulisse.

In the prologue to Book V he admits that the two cities have coalesced into
one--the Church, with its content of tares and wheat.

'Henceforward, since not merely every nation, but the princes also with few
exceptions, became Catholics, I seem to myself to have composed the history no
longer of two cities, but almost entirely of one--i.e. which I call the
Church. For I should not, as before, speak of these two cities, as two (since
the elect and the reprobate are now in one home), but strictly as one, but of a
mixed sort as grain together with chaff.'

In the prologue to Book VI, after lamenting the arrogance of the hierarchy
who seek to strike the kingdom with that sword, which they only hold through the
favour of kings, he goes on to say that he must not be taken as intending to
separate the Empire from the Church, since in the Church of God the two
functions, the sacerdotal and the regal, are known to exist; and he refers to
his previous statement, that the history now relates to one society only. In the
prologue to Book VIII he once more repeats his acknowledgment to S. Augustine,
This last book is occupied with discussion of the last things, like the later
books of the 'De Civitate Dei.' Following S. Augustine, Otto definitely rejects
the Chiliastic doctrine, that our Lord will return for a terrestrial millennium
and reign visibly in any sense in which He is not now reigning. This work alone
is evidence of the way in which the great Christian Commonwealth can be regarded
alike as Empire and Church, and is thought of as Civitas Dei.

Let us go forward a century. In S. Thomas Aquinas the mediæval world has its
most authoritative statement, just as Dante gave it its imaginative symbol The
ordered intelligence of S. Thomas was different in the extreme from the highly
emotional and stormy intellect of S. Augustine. In the writings of S. Thomas we
have a minutely articulated system of mediæval thought as it had come to be in
the day of the supreme achievements of the Papacy. Born ten years after the
death of Innocent III, S. Thomas lived through most of the latter phases of the
Hohenstauffen struggle, more especially the Council of Lyons and the despotism
of the 'stupor mundi et immutator mirabilis ' Frederic II. We do well to take
him as the central point for the understanding of mediæval thought.

S. Thomas's system of politics is expressed in several places. First there is
the commentary on Aristotle's 'Politics.' With that we are not concerned in this
connection. There is the not inconsiderable discussion of fundamentals in
politics in the 'Summa Theologica,' ii. 2, qq. 90-109, and also in certain other
passages of the same work anent heretics, and so forth. Lastly we have the
little treatise 'De Regimine Principum.' Of this only the first book and four
chapters of the second are written by S. Thomas. The rest is by Ptolemy of Lucca.

S. Thomas has been called the first Whig. His discussion of forms of
government follows on Aristotle's. Of all that I make abstraction to-day. When
you study him in detail you see that he develops his system in dependence on
three main authorities--Scripture, Aristotle, and Augustine. I do not know how
many times S. Augustine is cited in the 'Summa,' but I should suppose it must be
quoted thousands of times. In the parts which deal with politics, we find a
great deal of dependence upon him. We do not hear of the doctrine of the two
cities, for the obvious reason that it was no longer held to fit, now that the
kingdom of this world had become the kingdom of our God and His Christ: and the
other use of the terms (that maintained by Otto), to denote merely the elect and
the reprobate, does not, strictly speaking, concern politics.

S. Thomas quotes most from S. Augustine's 'De Libero Arbitrio,' but we have
important arguments drawn from the 'De Civitate Dei.' He makes much use of that
definition--the Ciceronian--which makes justice the essence of a State. In the
passage which justifies war (ii. 2, q. 40, 1) no fewer than eight passages are
adduced. Further on, in article 3, he argues, from Augustine's words in the ' De
Civitate Dei,' that stratagems in warfare are legitimate. S. Thomas discusses
whether it be right to carry the doctrine of the Christianity of the State so
far as to make vice equivalent to crime. This he decides in the negative. He was
too wise to want a Puritan tyranny. He does this on grounds derived entirely
from S. Augustine. At the same time he disclaims any idea of treating Augustine
as an infallible guide. On the treatment of heretics he bases his argument for
persecution upon three passages of S. Augustine. Like Augustine also he condemns
compulsion of the heathen. He even goes so far as to say that a Christian
governor would be right to tolerate heathen ceremonies. A heretic or schismatic
is an erring and rebellious child, and is therefore to be corrected. Quite other
is the case of the Jew or the Pagan. His treatment of neighbours' lives and
property is in line with S. Augustine, especially the remarkable passages in
which he defends the social and industrial legislation of the Mosaic system, on
the ground that it is all based on the idea of fellowship.

Further evidence is to be found in the 'De Regimine Principum.' In treatment
and manner it is unlike S. Augustine. But we find more than one reference to the
'De Civitate Dei,' especially the reproduction of the Mirror of Princes. Even
more relevant is the argument from ends. The true end and reward of a godly
prince must be beyond this life. We have arguments much the same as those of S.
Augustine, only applied rather to the prince than the respublica. In I,
14 there is a long and elaborate argument to show that the end of a
well-governed commonwealth must be virtuous life, which leads to the fruition of
God. Since the lord of the ultimate end must obviously direct those who are
concerned only with subordinate ends, the Roman pontiff must have the ultimate
authority over Christian kings, just as among the ancient Gauls the Druids held
the control.

It is interesting, and for our purpose not impertinent, to go on with the
book and consider the later parts written by Ptolemy of Lucca. They are fair
evidence of the mediæval ideals and were written not much later. Here we have a
direct and continuous dependence on the 'De Civitate Dei.' It is not merely a
question of the influence of ideas, but of the following of the book. References
to it are numerous. Many arguments are drawn from it. S. Augustine is the
writer's acknowledged authority for the claim that the Romans were entrusted
with the dominion of the world as a reward for their virtue; and Christians are
bidden to imitate this self-sacrifice. From S. Augustine is cited the
interpretation of the words about the image and superscription of Cæsar; that
the image of Cæsar was (as it were) the image of God. Ptolemy accepts
Augustine's account of the difference between despotic and properly political
power, arguing that the former would never have been known but for sin. The
writer seems to have had the aim of harmonising Aristotle and Augustine. We need
not follow him in his description of the Empire or in his criticism of ancient
constitutions. All that we need observe is this, that in this book, which is a
moderate but definite expression of the hierarchical theory of the State, we
have ample evidence that the influence of S. Augustine was not merely an
universally pervading force in the Middle Ages, but was consciously adopted and
felt.

Towards the close of the Middle Ages we can still trace the direct influence
of S. Augustine in political thought. One writer (I think a Frenchman) arguing
in favour of national States, at a time when the imperial authority was no more
than a name, at least in France, makes free use of the passage in the 'De
Civitate Dei' which maintains the value of a multitude of small societies.

Dante's 'De Monarchia' is the best known, as it is the most impressive, of
the accounts of the Holy Roman Empire. It is, as you know, Ghibelline, i.e. Imperialist,
and is designed to show that the Emperor holds his sceptre by grace of God
immediately, not mediately through the Pope. The claim was not new. Henry IV
made it against Hildebrand. So also did the Hohenstauffen. Dante's grandiose
conception is still that of the mediæval unity--a great world Church-State. I
do not think that the book as a whole can be said to depend on S. Augustine. But
it is hardly possible not to suspect that the second book did owe much to the
'De Civitate Dei.' In that book Dante proves that the Empire of the world was
given to the Romans for all time, as a reward of virtue. It is noticeable that
Dante quotes the 'De Civitate Dei' once.

Very interesting is the book ' On the Origin and Progress of the Roman
Empire,' from which a quotation has already been made. It is by Engelbert, Abbot
of Admont, in Austria.[8] The writer founds
his argument to a large extent on the 'De Civitate Dei.' Most of the book is
little more than a comment on this. It was written at the time (1310) of the
last strictly mediæval revival of the Empire under Henry of Luxemburg, and
after the final defeat of the Hohenstauffen, i.e. about the same time as
Dante's book. The writer had to face the existing conditions, with the de
facto independence of France. Therefore he takes into account S. Augustine's
view that the world would fare better under a number of independent communities,
joined in one bond of harmony and respecting each other. This he counters in the
following argument Such, he says, is the mutual jealousy between nations that no
such harmony is to be looked for. The only chance of peace is for the world to
become one State. The argument has reference mainly to Catholic Christendom in
the West. One remarkable passage takes into account the existence of
non-Christian States. They, he says, are equally bound by national law and must
recognise the principle of justice which is suum cuique tribuere. In
other words the principle at the bottom of international amity is seen to be the
maxim to love one another, which is supposed to govern the human race. This is
not far from the maxim of William of Ockham, which was a little later, that all
men compose one society. What for our purpose is most noteworthy is the author's
view, that Christianity has now become the law of the greater part of the world,
and a Christian Empire is therefore the ideal.

One most interesting passage is of prophetic import. Arguing, as Engelbert
did, in favour of the imperial ideal at a time when the most progressive States
of Europe had freed themselves and the national monarchies were being
consolidated, he declares that the unity of the Holy Roman Empire is two-fold,
both secular and ecclesiastical, and that if the nations withdraw themselves
from recognition of the Emperor, it will not be long before they throw off
allegiance to the Pope.

Even more prophetic are the writings of Wyclif. Wyclif is enormously
dependent on S. Augustine. He develops that other side in Augustine's conception
of the Church which was at times conveniently ignored by the clericalists--that
which insists on its primary application to the elect and no one else. He does
this with conscious use of S. Augustine. This leads straight to the doctrine of
the Invisible Church.

Finally, he uses S. Augustine to support his radical Erastianism. From him he
develops the doctrine that the clergy must always be subordinate to the civil
power, for royalty represents the fatherhood of God and the priesthood the
sonship. He cites S. Augustine in regard to the image and superscription of
Cæsar. Wyclif was the most thoroughgoing Erastian who ever lived. He wrote
after Marsilius of Padua, and was probably influenced by the 'Defensor Pacis'
with its programme of democratic Erastianism. Most of Wyclif's works are a plea
for the disendowment of the Church. The 'De Dominio Civili' is not mainly a
treatise on politics, as its name might seem to imply. It is concerned with
property, and especially with corporate property. Wyclif wants the Church to be
disendowed. Then, he says, the lords, having more lands, will have less motive
to oppress the poor. Inthe 'Speculum Militantis Ecclesiae' he treats of
the Church as equivalent to the commonwealth, and declares that it consists of
the lords, the clergy and the labouring classes![9]
His doctrine of dominion founded on grace is intended to argue that property has
duties as well as rights, i.e. that the right of private property is not
absolute. That indeed was the view of S. Thomas and S. Augustine. It was the
Roman pagan conception of absolute property that triumphed at the close of the
Middle Ages. This idea, which is the foundation of modern capitalism, led at the
time to further attempts to depress the peasants into slavery. It has been
fraught with a thousand evils, from which even now the world is slowly and with
many struggles trying to recover. The 'reception,' as it is called, of Roman Law
in 1495 in Germany may be taken as the date when the Middle Ages came to an end
and the Roman ideas of property had conquered the West.

The great mediæval unity was always largely an ideal. Still it was the
ideal. It was a unity of religion, of government, of economics, of morals, of
social life and of outward culture. This unity, if not determined by S.
Augustine, owed much to his influence. It was not the direct or intended result
of his writing. He spoke, indeed, of things not being so bad as people thought,
of a possible revival of the Roman power. For this he has been blamed. It is
said he showed lack of prescience. But was it so? The actual Roman Empire lasted
in the West for more than half a century after S. Augustine's death. Then came
the Ostrogothic kingdom of Theodoric. That too vanished. Justinian's conquest is
not to be ignored. Why should it be?

Augustine did not foresee the Holy Roman Empire of the German people, or the
cry of Gerbert to Otto III, 'Nostrum, nostrum est imperium Romanum' Yet
such a phrase may be held to have justified his words. For it was the Roman
ideal that stood for peace and culture in those troublous times.

Easier is it to trace this influence in the doctrine of the whole world as
the Civitas Dei, connecting this with S. Augustine's undoubted belief in
the unity and universal mission of the Church, and his assimilation of it to a
society.

Easier still is it to trace his influence in the otherworldly reference which
lay behind all mediæval developments, in the growth of Western monasticism with
its characteristic qualities, with the widespread acceptance of his principle of
property.

Some would trace to S. Augustine the whole development of the Papal power.
This was hardly a legitimate development, but not at all impossible.

Clearly we cannot understand the Middle Ages on this political and social
side without Augustine. He it is who helped much to make the Western world
compact.